RCs: 11 to 20 Questions for CAT with Answers PDF

Passage

Read the following paragraph and answer the questions given below:
You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day.
I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language.
I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, the other a “moscheto”; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month.
Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.
"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction.
I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer.
What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched.
And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end and be buried in universal ruin?"
“To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante”.
Q1: Why does the ephemera think that the world as it knows is coming to an end?
(a) He has seen other bushes die out over the seven hours that he has been alive and believes that all of them will eventually die of the same fate
(b) The philosophers of the human race have foretold that the world of Moulin Joly would end in eighteen hours
(c) The fly thinks that the young members of his tribe are growing more corrupted and foresees an eventual decline in the morals of his species
(d) The fly sees that the sun is setting and believes that the sun will extinguish at the horizon thereby ending all life

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Q2: What is the primary purpose of the passage?
(a) To entertain the reader by satirizing human life by comparing it to the life of a fictional fly of species “ephemera”
(b) To show how short and insignificant our life really is when compared to the vastness of the universe
(c) To persuade the reader of the momentary nature of life and argue for greater harmony and cooperation
(d) To persuade the reader of the futility of human life when we consider the vastness of the universe

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Q3: Which of the following comparisons is not drawn between the ephemera and human life in the passage?
(a) The tendency of the older generation to believe that over time the younger generation will become corrupted
(b) The pointlessness of accumulating wealth that we cannot enjoy in old age
(c) The general disregard for Art shown by the younger generation in spite of all the work done by the older generations
(d) The tendency to worry about the future of the race

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Q4: What is the tone of the passage?
(a) Acerbic
(b) Humorous
(c) Sarcastic
(d) Analytical

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